Pages

Friday, March 26, 2010

Taco Kuiper Awards

Yesterday late afternoon I fetched the April edition of Highlands Herald (The Voice of the Emakhazeni Municipal Region) hot off the press.
I waited until the late afternoon peak hour Johannesburg traffic cleared before driving home to Waterval Boven.
Along the way I distributed the paper, as well dropping off a few thousand copies at the Machado Toll Plaza. I got into bed at 2am.
This morning I drove straight back to Johannesburg. Highlands Herald was entered in to the Taco Kuiper Investigative Journalism Awards at the Rand Club in Loveday Street.
Unlike other awards, there are only two prizes: Runner up (R100 000) went to Carte Blanche for its Chicken Run expose, while first prize (R200 000) went to Robert Rose of Financial Mail for his Tannenburg expose.
There was one special mention.. for my entry, the Highlands Herald "But who mentioned corruption?" story that had its origins in last year's Mpumalanga service delivery protests.
It was just the encouragement I needed.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

charles king

follow me

btflmind on Instagram

here i am

...how can i stand here

and watch the sunrise,following the mountainsto where they touch the sky,out of the vastness and the depths of the ocean, and to think for a momentthe point of it all is to make much of me?because i'm just a whisperand YOU are the thunder...

don't die of shame

Poet Antjie Krog stressed that a writer should not concern themselves as to whether they are read or not, since “one writes so that you don’t die of shame, that you didn't say something when a girl is cut up somewhere in a parking lot and raped … You know that a poem will achieve nothing, but at least you will get through the night - André Naffis-Sahely

apathy WARNING!

Apathy neutralises the sensesas survival deploys its brutal forces one gets cutoff from others and becomes more and morefamiliar with the complete inward-turning of death –*stanza from “On My Behalf” in poet Antjie Krog’s 'Skinned' anthology

what is writing

What is writing if not an exercise in recuperating memory? It is stopping to listen – of consciously being alive and attentive. Memory is the mentor of imagination, as stars are its vectors. The discipline of writing is also a great gift, a freedom – by writing one is gradually relieved of the sense of uniqueness of self. It is in many ways a liberating shuffle in the direction of humility -from a letter Dominique Botha had written to her parents to explain her thoughts behind the writing of her (2013) novel, False River

Pageviews

about writers

'Stray lines from Breyten Breytenbach’s Intimate Stranger about writers being the “scattered or lost tribe of the world” and how when they meet, they “recognize one another by a look in the eyes as if squinting against the sun, and by the clumsy gestures of hands.”'- Andre Naffis-Sahely in A World of Sharp Edges

btflmind on Twitter

inspiration

German writer Heinrich Böll because he embodied that rare combination of political awareness, artistic creativity, and moral integrity which remains a model for future generations. The courage to stand up for one's beliefs; encouragement to meddle in public affairs; and unconditional activism in support of dignity and human rights were characteristics of the writer Böll.